20 Books About Reproductive Rights That Every Woman Should Read

Every time you turn on the news, someone is yelling about defunding Planned Parenthood, passing a new abortion ban, or arguing about why birth control should be harder to obtain. But why are people still fighting about abortion and birth control? Wasn't this settled decades ago? If you feel a little lost, here are 20 books you must read if you want to understand the still-unresolved battle over sex, pregnancy, and women's bodies.

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If you want basic background on how women can be in charge of their own bodies:

Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Book Collective. For almost four decades, Our Bodies, Ourselves has been the introductory book for reproductive health care. What was once focused solely on women's health issues like pregnancy and menopause has expanded over the years to address issues like poverty, race, and gender identity, and their impact on reproductive health care, making it stand the test of time.

If you want to know what it was like in the United States before abortion was legal:

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig. Before there was legal abortion, there was the battle for contraception itself and the ability to prevent a pregnancy from occurring in the first place. Eig's book is a highly detailed, highly informative account of the social and financial stumbling blocks that the creators of the first birth control pill faced in trying to get their product developed. It also doesn't shy away from the problematic aspects of the story in regards to medical consent, or the controversial histories of the figures involved in the groundbreaking achievement.

When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in the United States by Leslie Reagan. Roe v. Wade wasn't the beginning of abortion, it was just the beginning of legal abortion. Reagan's book details the nearly 100 years leading up to the Roe decision and how abortion went from illegal but mostly ignored to targeted by medical professionals and driven underground, only to eventually resurface and gain legal acceptance.

If you want to read about what doctors experience to offer services:

This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor by Susan Wicklund. In Wicklund's memoir, she explains what motivated her to become a provider — her own experience obtaining an abortion. In a candid, first-person account, Wicklund tells her own history, starting with an abortion in her family's past and continuing through the constant harassment and fear of being an abortion provider in the '80s and '90s.

Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade by Carole Joffe. What was it like to offer clandestine abortions before they were legal? How did doctors decide to add abortion as a service once it became legal? What professional and societal pressures were put on them once they chose to openly offer care? Joffe, a sociologist, talks to a number of early providers who tell their stories in the own words.

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Fetus Fanatics: When Government Collaborates with Anti-Choice Zealots by Peggy Bowman. In 1991, Operation Rescue brought hundreds of pro-life activists to Wichita, Kansas, and shut down the abortion clinics for weeks in what was known as the "Summer of Mercy." Bowman, a pro-choice activist working for Dr. George Tiller, was at the center of the action, and tells about how the local government turned a blind eye, allowing the siege on the city's clinic to continue unabated, which she believes led to the escalating hostility that eventually resulted in abortion providers nationwide becoming direct targets of violence.

If you want to understand why abortion opponents do what they do — often in their own words:

Abandoned by Monica Migliorino Miller. There are an endless number of first-person pro-life accounts, but none have had the detail or quality of writing that Abandoned offers. Miller, an anti-abortion activist and photographer, tells the story of how she joined up with some of the most notorious anti-abortion activists of the '80s, and how their secret trips to recover the remains of aborted fetuses from Chicago clinics eventually became the foundation for many of the graphic images seen on posters and placards today. Quite possibly the best look inside the mind and motivations of an opponent of abortion.

Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generationby Charles Camosy. Despite Camosy's best intentions, few who support reproductive rights will see his very strict exceptions for when abortion should be legal and how it should be performed in those rare cases to be any sort of workable "compromise." But what Camosy does offer in his book is a seldom seen and very earnest advocacy for reforms like paid pregnancy leave, more health care, universal pre-K, and child care support, and even more penalties for domestic violence or refusing to provide child support — reforms both sides of the aisle should be able to get behind.

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Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War by James Risen and Judy Thomas. Starting with the legalization of abortion and the early days of the "Rescue" movement — those activists best known for barricading clinic doors in the '80s and early '90s — the book follows the struggle to keep clinics open until the introduction of the FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act. The two reporters detail the lives of some of the most passionate and persistent anti-abortion advocates, including the powers struggles within their own movement. Likely the most accessible book on the birth of the pro-life movement.

If you want to understand how reproductive rights have been under assault since Roe:

The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back by Gloria Feldt. While abortion rights and access to birth control have been under continuous assault since the 2010 election, the dismantling of these rights began even earlier. Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, documents the beginning of the onslaught, which escalated during the Bush administration, in her now 10-year-old but still extremely insightful book.

How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Sex, Virtue, and the Way We Live Now by Christina Page. According to Page, the religious right doesn't just want to overturn Roe, they want to end access to contraception too, and make sex a thing only married people do and just when they want to have children. She explains the many-pronged ways they are trying to undermine your sex life, from pharmacist refusals of birth control prescriptions to abstinence-only sex ed in school, and then champions the somehow controversial idea that sex for enjoyment alone is actually a good thing.

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PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollitt. Can people win back their reproductive rights when they are ashamed to even talk about abortion? That's the premise behind Pollitt's book, as she urges everyone to delve into the abortion wars to better understand that abortion is not shameful.

If you want to go beyond birth control and abortion, and dive into reproductive justice:

Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement by Jennifer Nelson. Nelson's book brings to the forefront the women of color vocally advocating for legal abortion rights — often in opposition to those in their own community. It's a must-read for those who want to learn how the battle for abortion rights evolved into reproductive justice.

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts. There is perhaps no more important book when it comes to tracing the history of reproductive oppression faced by African American women in the United States. From slavery to coerced sterilization to welfare caps, Roberts lays out centuries of assault on black women and families with regard to when and if they are allowed to control their own reproductive lives.

Policing the National Body: Race, Gender and Criminalization in the United States by Jael Silliman and Anannya Bhattacharjee. There is no reproductive freedom without actual freedom, and for poor communities and communities of color, incarceration is a daily threat. Policing the National Body focuses on how reproductive rights are limited in a society ready to punish those who are undocumented, poor, or of color, and speaks directly to the populations often underrepresented in the mainstream reproductive rights movement.

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If you want a lot of facts about abortion and reproductive rights issues right at your fingertips:

Reproductive Politics, What Everyone Needs to Know, Rickie Solinger. Solinger's book explores abortion, assisted reproductive technologies, "personhood," and other reproductive issues in simple, straightforward language that anyone — academic or layperson — can digest. With its brief summaries and documentation of how each particular reproductive issue has evolved over time due to political changes and pressure, think of it as a Reproductive Rights 101 textbook.

Every Third Woman in America: How Legal Abortion Transformed Our Nation, Dr. David Grimes. Written by a doctor, the book is a bit drier and more medical than many others on the list, but also involves far more scientifically accurate and fact-based information about abortion's impact on those who undergo them and on society on the whole. In addition to telling of his own time as an abortion provider, Grimes patiently explains away the myths anti-abortion activists have inserted into the debate, such as abortion causing breast cancer or the likelihood of injury during a procedure.

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